O'Neal Featured in Black Box Magazine

O'Neal Featured in Black Box Magazine

The
following article appeared in the Trailblazers section of the Q3 2010
edition of Black Box Magazine. For more information on Black Box
Magazine, visit www.insideblackbox.com

While many trailblazers begin making a fresh start in some area of
their life, Kevin Bean, president and CEO of O’Neal Inc. has moved his
company in a new direction by making the 35-year-old company relevant to
the need of today. Beginning as a design firm and adding the
construction component of the business in 1997, O’Neal has been around
for quite a while. Recently, though, the attitude taken by Bean and his
associates exemplifies a frame of mind that’s somewhat non-traditional
for the construction and design industries by making the green movement a
key facet of their work.

“What we are focused is on solar biomass energies, so we have
established a partnership with a European company based in the
Netherlands, with manufacturing in Taiwan and Germany, and what we are
doing is helping bring some of their technologies here to the U.S.”
Brian Gallagher, director of marketing at O’Neal, adds. “In addition to
that, we are doing some work on biomass plants, so global energy is
gaining some momentum and it is going to continue to gain a lot of
momentum as government program change”.

Recently, O’Neal worked with NURRC, agreeing on a $50 million deal to
design and build the world’s largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling
facility in Spartanburg, S.C. Every year, the plant recycles 100 million
pounds of plastic, which can be reused as new bottles. The plastic
recycled in these efforts amounts to as many as two billion reused
plastic bottles produced every year.

In addition to projects which result in brand new facilities, O’Neal
also takes part in creating designs that update and upgrade standing
facilities in an environmentally-friendly, cost-effective manner,
resulting in overall savings for their clients.

“A lot of companies that we work with have corporate sustainability
programs, and they are looking at LEED certification for their
buildings,” Gallagher says. “They are looking at energy efficiency and
conservation measures, and they are also looking at alternatives sources
for generating energy, so, it’s a natural fit with what our clients are
looking for, and we want to find some ways to bring more solutions to
them.”

But the strength of O’Neal lies not only with progressive, efficient
deigns. O’Neal also boast an energy auditing system where they track
building’s current energy use and identity changes that a business can
make in order to use energy more efficiently, potentially resulting in
tax credits for businesses that make these changes.

“It’s not just part of business, but helping the local economy and the
planet that puts the “why” behind the business,” Bean says. “I can see
that in our employees and team members-they are excited about it.

“I think the other thing that’s interesting is that our business tends
to be about numbers and rate of return, but this is not the primary
driver, he continues. “You have to have a reasonable business case, but a
lot of our clientele is based in Europe. The are working to conserve
energy because it’s the right thing to do, and that’s what I think is
exciting-the financial model is second.”

And yet the green movement is still evolving the growing, which makes
keeping up with them in business a full-time effort. “We have to kind of
navigate it because all industries are trying to determine what the
future is,” Bean says. “Renewable energy would be a part of it and it
will drive a lot of new business, and we don’t want to just participate
in solar and biomass, we want to help the companies who want to
participate, so I see that as a whole new opportunity for us. We are an
established business, but now the challenge is that we have to reinvent
ourselves and realign what we want to do.”

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